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Power to pool light

I have a 10+ year old in-ground pool that was installed by a previous owner. The wires feeding from the outdoor pump house were ran in seal-tight and buried. All the other equipment (including the wiring from the light niche to the pool j-box and from the pool j-box to the light switch) are all in pvc conduit. It is just the run from the outdoor sub-panel to the light switch that was buried in seal-tight. Well, the seal tight has degraded and broken where it comes out of the ground near the outdoor subpanel and the metal has nicked the coating of the neutral and ground. I was originally just going to bury a watertight j-box and make a joint there, but the switch is located at my deck and it would be very easy to feed from my main house panel. Is there any reason (code or other) that the power has to be fed from the pool sub-panel and not from my main home panel?

Re: Power to pool light

Originally Posted by crawlejg

I have a 10+ year old in-ground pool that was installed by a previous owner. The wires feeding from the outdoor pump house were ran in seal-tight and buried. All the other equipment (including the wiring from the light niche to the pool j-box and from the pool j-box to the light switch) are all in pvc conduit. It is just the run from the outdoor sub-panel to the light switch that was buried in seal-tight. Well, the seal tight has degraded and broken where it comes out of the ground near the outdoor subpanel and the metal has nicked the coating of the neutral and ground. I was originally just going to bury a watertight j-box and make a joint there, but the switch is located at my deck and it would be very easy to feed from my main house panel. Is there any reason (code or other) that the power has to be fed from the pool sub-panel and not from my main home panel?

Thank you,
crawlejg

Codes are going to depend on each jurisdiction. I'd call a local Electrician.

Re: Power to pool light

The NEC states that no more than 1 circuit (feeder) can go to a detached structure. (this feeder can contain two hots and one neutral) it becomes something of a grey area as to if the pool is considered an individual structure. In my area it is. Since you have a sub panel, for the pool, being fed from the house then you can not add a differently derived source for the pool. It will have to come from the pool panel. Also, you can not bury any junction box and make it non-accessible. The circuit for the light also has to be GFCI protected

Re: Power to pool light

I would be leery about it from a safety perspective. If something happened with an electrical short or issue it would be best to be able to shut off all the electricity in one location. It will not be obvious to anyone that they need to look elsewhere to shut off electricity to the light.